war

This hour, we talk about three different stories that touch various people in our state. First, a check-in on how the Department of Defense has followed through with exhuming the remains of 388 sailors and Marines who died during the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Some of their relatives, including a Connecticut man, had asked for to give their loved ones a proper burial at home. We have an update on whether their requests have been heard.

More than 50 U.S. State Department officials have signed an internal memo calling for a change in the way the United States approaches Syria — specifically, advocating military pressure on Bashar Assad's regime to push him toward the negotiating table.

The diplomats expressed their opposition to the current U.S. policy through a cable on the State Department's dissent channel — which exists for just that reason.

But NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that it's unusual for so many officials to sign on to such a cable.

A victim and his doctors described a "war zone" following the deadliest mass public shooting in modern United States history.

Dr. Chadwick Smith, a surgeon at the Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando, Fla.,, said that a little after 2 a.m. ET on Sunday, patients began arriving into the emergency room. It was quickly filled to capacity with people suffering with wounds to the extremities, the chest, the pelvis and the abdomen. Some had small wounds others had large-caliber wounds.

An attack on an intelligence office at the Baqaa refugee camp in Jordan today was an act of terrorism, says government spokesman Mohammed Momani. Jordan says five service members were killed: a staff sergeant, two corporals, a lance corporal and a private.

The timing of the attack coincides with the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, which Momani called "a clear evidence of those terrorists' criminal behavior and extremism."

"Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed," President Obama said Friday, in the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to Hiroshima, Japan.

In 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on that city, killing an estimated 140,000 people. A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. Within weeks, Japan surrendered, ending the war in the Pacific Theater.

President Obama wraps up a weeklong Asia trip on Friday with a historic visit to Hiroshima, Japan. Obama will be the first sitting president to visit the city synonymous with the deadly nuclear age that began there more than seven decades ago.

Obama said he plans to "honor all those who were lost in World War II and reaffirm our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons."

At least 28 people have been killed and more than 320 wounded in an attack in Kabul. The assault targeted a key government security agency and included a suicide car bombing and an offensive by armed militants. The Taliban has claimed responsibility.

The attack hit at about 9 a.m. local time, during morning rush hour — one reason there are so many casualties, NPR's Philip Reeves reports. It comes about a week after the Taliban announced the start of their spring offensive.

Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima on Monday, making him the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the site since the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb there at the end of World War II.

Kerry didn't apologize for the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, as some Japanese activists have pushed for. He did honor those who died in the bombings, NPR's Elise Hu reports.

On the visit, Kerry toured the peace museum and laid a wreath at the monument to the attack, The Associated Press reports.

Later this month, Yale Cabaret will cast its spotlight on a unique "troupe" of New Haven performers: veterans and refugees who experienced the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from very different places. This hour, we hear their stories and learn about their play "Voices from the Long War."

Sweden has taken in more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country — 160,000 last year alone. Refugees are now part of the landscape, even in small towns. And nearly everybody, not just those working with aid groups, is encountering the newcomers.

In the southern town of Ronneby, Dagmar Nordberg is giving Swedish lessons to Waliullah Hafiz, who goes by Wali, at her kitchen table. The 60-year-old Swedish museum director met this 23-year-old migrant from Kabul on a train platform in a nearby village on a freezing cold day last November.

For a normal show, on a normal day, in a normal time, we'd usually put two or three experts in a room with Colin and ask them to hash out whatever it is we're interested in for that hour.

For this show, by the time it's over with, we'll have corresponded with dozens of people and recorded interviews with seven or eight experts from ten or eleven different disciplines: a philosopher, an ethicist, a futurist, a speechwriter, a comedy writer, an author of speculative fiction, a politician, an 'investigative humorist,' a Muslim, an expert in international affairs, and an expert in... manners.